Sukhasana (The Easy Pose) - Yoga With Adriene

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to yoga with Adrien. I'm Adrien and today we are going to start with a posture called sucasan. A seated meditation pose if you will. You don't have to do any meditation but this is our first posture and hopefully it'll improve uh this Mr. Burns quality that we all are slowly falling into because of hours and hours on the computer or on Facebook. So we're going to counteract that today and learn sucasana. [Music] Okay. So welcome sucasana the easy pose. Um sucasana is not always that easy. So rather than thinking of it as the easy pose which sucasana is Sanskrit by the way translating to easy pose I like to think of it as this pose of ease. So a place where we attempt to find ease. Um so we're going to start by taking the legs crossing them crisscross applesauce style and right away paying attention to our foundation. So always in yoga asa thinking about building it from the ground up. So the foundation being of course whatever part of your body that's touching the mother the earth. I was kind of new the mother earth. Um so right away even here sitbones these two push pens connecting to the earth. I love yoga because we get to touch our booty. So you can take your fingertips and move the fleshy part of your buttocks aside feeling the sitbones root down to the earth. And then the outer edges of the feet also connecting to the earth. So already I'm starting to put myself in this chair or this place. um where I have more awareness than maybe I do unlocking my car door or getting into the car. Um so if this pose is not feeling so easy for you, then you can take some props. You can take a block or a blanket, which I have here, this little Mexican blanket or even a book, anything. And lift the hips up. So you have a little bit of a fighting chance here. So the tops of the thighs can melt down and the hips can open up a little bit more. Hands can rest wherever they gently fall naturally. And um just ask yourself if you feel happier with your palms up or palms down. Rather than saying any which way lately, I'm interested in just empowering you to find what feels good. I feel like yoga is awesome for that. Empowering ourselves to find what feels good and then of course recognize when things don't feel good. So, sucasan, the pose of ease or the easy pose. We'll connect the outer edges of the feet, the sitbones to the earth. And then we'll just start by kind of hunkering down here, drawing the chin to the chest, rounding the spine, coming into that kind of Mr. Burns posture. Chin to chest here. Naval draws back. You can close your eyes and just letting the skin of the back stretch. Take a nice sweet deep breath in. And as you exhale, you can begin to rock the pelvis down. Sitbones connecting again to the earth. And I'll just slowly crawl up the staircase of the spine. Nice and slow, just like we do in sixth grade theater arts class. Vertebrae by vertebrae, lengthening up through the crown of the head. And then maybe I'll loop the shoulders, taking the shoulders a little forward, up and back. And then I want to tag a little bit of weight down in my elbows just to create space between my ears and the shoulders. And at any time if you're feeling like you could use a little space in your neck, I recommend dropping your chin to your chest and drawing a few circles with your nose round and round. And if you're a little bit tight in the neck, which most of us are, you can start with small like saucer size circles and then allow them to grow larger like salad plate and then big buffet plate. And then don't forget to reverse it. Okay. So we have a couple of neck rolls, we have a couple of shoulder rolls, and then sucasan. Tops of the thighs roll down. There's this idea of being present and soft but still firm in the body. So you can think about drawing your navl to your spine and then finding this natural lift in the heart or your sternum, the chest. So the chest is lifting up towards the sky. So is the crown of the head. We've looped the shoulders around, given a little weight to our elbows. So I have this sweet feeling right now of being grounded to the earth, but still lifted and lengthening up towards the sky. Then I'll begin to soften my eyelids. Maybe soften the skin of my face. Relax the face. Can smile a little bit like what am I doing? Meditation, sucasana, what is yoga? Why am I here? And just come to this place of inner calm. Heart's lifting. Shoulder blades are rotating together and down. Navl's drawing towards the spine. And then if we want we can draw the palms together here. Really pressing the palms together. We call this uh anjeli mudra which we'll get to when we talk about mudras on another day. But just as a little reminder I like to bring my palms together here in the prayer position to lift my heart or lift my sternum to my thumbs. And then just notice if you tend to lean forward a little bit here. Maybe you have a little flexibility in the hips or if you feel like there's a magnet drawing your navl to the wall behind you. And maybe just as a little bit of of a guide, fact, I'll turn her to the side to show you this. Maybe just as a guide here, we can think about rather than being here or here, think about finding a straight line from the crown of the head through the heart and then to the pelvis. So, in general, I feel like head over the heart, heart over the pelvis is a sweet way to be. And then if you notice yourself like chilling out here, not being judgmental like, "Oh god, my posture sucks, but just remembering head over heart, heart over pelvis, because it's the journey, it's the practice, it's the art of noticing or the awareness that's going to get us to this place of ease." So then just being like, "Oh yeah, head over heart, heart over pelvis." Finding that awareness in the body and then coming into alignment. We can sit here in sucasan for at least five nice long deep breaths. I recommend 10 to 15. And remember yoga was or yoga asa rather was first created so that the yogis could sit in meditation pose this easy pose. So they could find ease here. So they can sit in meditation for long long long long long extended periods of time. So arrive at your seat, find that ease, and if you get really distracted, just come back to the sound of the breath. I like to think of this pose as a check-in. Okay, so that was sucasana or the easy pose. Thank you so much for being with us here today and for learning that basic posture. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comment box and I'll get back to you. if you haven't already and visit Yoga withAdrien for a lot more yogic goodies. Namaste. [Music] [Music]